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A Little Passage on the Nature of the Mother

The mother forgives a person his trespasses, that is, it allows him to ignore his natural weaknesses so that he can promote his strengths. This can be a problem if the person abuses this opportunity and allows others to take up the slack of what are properly his own weaknesses. But sometimes it is the best thing that can happen, since the development of a person’s strength may break new ground and on this new ground afford him new opportunities not available on the original ground. For example, if a person is able to escape his home situation and go to a college (alma mater, “nourishing mother”) which grants him tools for social and financial independence, he may later revisit more effectively unhealed wounds deriving from his weaknesses. That did not happen with me. I have ever been forced to solve the problems issuing from my weaknesses right at the place they issued, because I had no mother who could play the forgiving role which would allow me to escape them until I was strong enough to deal with them in a not-all-consuming and/or non-self-destructive way.

Some solace can be found in works like the biblical Book of Job and the great Carl Jung’s Answer to Job, which go to great lengths to rationalize the meaning of human suffering. When God admits in chapter 2 that Satan persuaded him to let him attack Job “for no reason at all”, it gets to the core of what it’s like to have either no mother, or a horrible one.